Angel of Death or Angel of Hope?

Scott Kirsner at Cinematech has an excellent dissection of the upcoming Sony Television Online release ANGEL OF DEATH written by none other than comic guy Ed Brubaker (CAPTAIN AMERICA, CRIMINAL)

From the Wall Street Journal article:

In addition to generating some ad revenue on the Web, Sony hopes that launching the show online will translate into strong sales for the DVD, much as a good start in theaters builds DVD sales for feature movies.

"We're not expecting to make all our money back in that initial [online] window," says Sean Carey, senior executive vice president, Sony Pictures Television.

Video Business has this to add:

Angel of Death is expected to be released in eight-minute increments over a two and a half month frame across Sony-branded Web sites, which have yet to be specified. Its forthcoming DVD release will string all of the content pieces together into a coherent film narrative. DVD launch dates and pricing haven’t been determined.


From all of us here at Pulp 2.0, let me say that this is an excellent strategy to segue people to the web from DVD and vice versa. The web run builds the audience awareness followed up by a DVD release to the masses.

These media will only converge further, and that's an excellent thing as well. What Sony is doing is what studios used to do back in the good old days - create content for serial consumption then re-edit the project for feature exhibition in other media. FLASH GORDON was released as a serial then re-edited for television under the title ROCKETSHIP.

I also like the idea that they are only spending $1M for the project. That means they have to get creative and not throw money at a "problem." They will probably shoot HD with limited locations and a workflow that integrates plenty of off-the-shelf CGI to augment the physical action.

This means the script has to be lean, mean and jam-packed with nothing but the pulp. I'm glad they got Brubaker as he works in a visual medium, knows dialog, and is affordable.

Pulp movies have arrived - again.